“what is it about me and basements? Why do I like the semi-subterranean life?” — William Boyd Basements Copy Share Image
“True learning only occurs when you love the subject you are studying and then the acquiring of knowledge is effortless because it… — William Boyd Education Copy Share Image
I have always thought if you are going to make a film, it's much better to have an original script that will… — William Boyd Always Copy Share Image
“any man over forty who deliberately combs his hair forward in a child’s fringe has something suspect about him,” — William Boyd Children Copy Share Image
“A vague worry has started alongside my self-satisfaction: I have established, with amazing rapidity, a reputation for maniacal, self-destructive courage.” — William Boyd Courage Copy Share Image
“Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary - it is the respective proportion of those two categories that make that life appear… — William Boyd Extraordinary Copy Share Image
There is a disconnect between the film Bond and the literary Bond which is their contemporaneity. I don't suffer from that. — William Boyd Between Copy Share Image
“You think it begins to diminish with time, the pain, then it comes back and hits you with a rawness and freshness… — William Boyd Diminish Copy Share Image
“When I think of my youth, he went in, what we took for granted, what we assumed was for ever certain, for… — William Boyd Youth Copy Share Image
What's important to me is that all of my books are in print - and, in a way, that becomes the challenge,… — William Boyd Becomes Copy Share Image
“I write - poignantly, in the most heartfelt way - about how I miss her and how I detest my life in… — William Boyd Frustration Copy Share Image
At a time when there's younger writers starting up and it's inevitable that you're becoming less fashionable, at a time when the… — William Boyd Apply Copy Share Image
“So I found myself asking the question: what is the opposite of a mistake? And I realised there wasn’t a word, in… — William Boyd Best intentions Copy Share Image
“Reasonable behavior was the last thing you wanted. You felt as if the resolution of human problems demanded passion and brute unreason,… — William Boyd Habits Copy Share Image
Even though I've been an avid consumer of contemporary music since my early teens, the world of rock music has always been… — William Boyd About Copy Share Image
“A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I… — William Boyd Abandoned Copy Share Image
“Maybe this is what life is like - we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is… — William Boyd Life Copy Share Image
I know many older writers who were very successful and whose books are now out of print, so you have to go… — William Boyd Book Copy Share Image
I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation. — William Boyd Admire Copy Share Image
“I was convinced I had overdrawn my balance of good fortune; that whatever haphazard benevolence the impassive universe might hold towards me… — william boyd Balance Copy Share Image
When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen,… — William Boyd Age Copy Share Image
“As I write this I feel that draining hollowing helplessness that genuine love for another person produces in you. It's at these… — William Boyd Genuine love Copy Share Image
It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay… — William Boyd Busy Copy Share Image
“Then, as I stood in that English garden on the soft early summer night, I felt a surge of pure well-being engulf… — William Boyd Happiness Copy Share Image
Do we change every time we have a new encounter? Are we endlessly mutable? I think these are fascinating questions: it's a… — William Boyd Change Copy Share Image
We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that… — William Boyd Facts Copy Share Image
“Winter reveals the massive, complex, muscular organization of the ancient oak. Like an old man stripped of his Savile Row, tailored suit… — William Boyd Flower Copy Share Image
“Take a look at anyone’s life. Take a look at your own. In the long fold catastrophe that makes up your three-score… — William Boyd Catastrophes Copy Share Image
In the broad spectrum of the arts, two worlds rarely overlap - the literary world and the world of rock music. — William Boyd Art Copy Share Image
“There were three PROs looking after us – a measure of how the army and the mass media were now coexisting and… — William Boyd Army Copy Share Image
“This was an adventure, I told myself, an intriguing quest, and one that I would regret not seeing through at least a… — William Boyd Adventure Copy Share Image
“Curious how these early linguistic abilities are so fragile, how unthinkingly and easily the brain lets them go.” — William Boyd Language Copy Share Image
“The view backward showed you all the twists and turns your life had taken, all the contingencies and chances, the random elements… — William Boyd Backward Copy Share Image
“I felt shocked and then saddened. life does this to you sometimes - leads you up a path and then drops you… — William Boyd Life Copy Share Image
“Feelings of depression; feelings of frustration; feelings of emptiness in the face of all this randomness - done down by the haphazard,… — William Boyd Depression Copy Share Image
“the key factor in our mutual pleasure was that we enjoyed each other’s company, which, banal though it may seem, is the… — William Boyd Pleasure Copy Share Image
“It was pleasant - and the sense of otherness was nice, that there were two people involved in this process, that we… — William Boyd Kissing Copy Share Image
“Like the button, the wheelbarrow, the spoon and the umbrella, the printed book is one of the truly great inventions of mankind… — William Boyd Books Copy Share Image
With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even… — William Boyd Acting Copy Share Image
When it's mutual, a man and a woman know, instinctively, wordlessly. They may do nothing about it, but the knowledge of that… — William Boyd Desire Copy Share Image
